Re: iCal export of repeated tasks

[Carsten Dominik <dominik@uva.nl>]

On Jun 13, 2008, at 11:24 AM, Adam Spiers wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 10:18:52AM +0200, Carsten Dominik wrote:
>> On Jun 12, 2008, at 1:47 PM, Adam Spiers wrote:
>>> Well, I agree that there may not be a good definition, in which  
>>> case a
>>> per-event property disabling export of the RRULE would be a perfect
>>> solution.
>>
>> Hi Adam,
>>
>> I do not feel comfortable with this specialized filtering, so I am  
>> not
>> implementing it.  It seems incorrect that the export of the exact  
>> same
>> Org file would lead to different iCal files, depending on the day  
>> when
>> you do the export.
>
> Sorry - either I have accidentally misled you, or my understanding is
> missing some nuance of your argument, because it was certainly not my
> intention to propose a mechanism which would produce different results
> depending on when the export is done.  I simply wanted to suggest that
> there could be a property which would have the same effect upon iCal
> export as would manually deleting the directive to repeat ('.+2w' or
> similar) from the end of the task's timestamp.  This would maintain
> the existing behaviour for repeated tasks within Org, but display it
> as a non-repeating task in my external calendaring clients
> (korganizer, ScheduleWorld, Google Calendar, my Nokia phone etc.)
>
> The motivation is that while I very much like org's functionality for
> automatically updating the timestamp on a repeated task once it has
> been marked as done, I do not want tasks such as "water plants"
> cluttering up my calendar forever into the future.  I only care about
> the next plant watering, not all others thereafter, and with screen
> real estate always short in supply (especially on mobile devices!),
> any possible savings are of value.

I can see that this is useful, but I still insist that Org should  
export a repeated event as such.   I am adding a hook, `org-before- 
save-iCalendar-file-hook'.  You can add some special cookie in the  
headline of the entry, and then search for this cookie in the exported  
file and remove the repetition rule.  How about that?

> Actually, now I think about it more, the above decluttering argument
> applies equally to the Org agenda itself.  So if it would be a more
> consistent request from the point of view of maintaining an intuitive
> UI or from ease of implementation, I would be perfectly happy if the
> proposed property disabled display of all but the first instance of
> the repeated task *everywhere*, i.e. not only in iCal exports, but
> also in agenda displays.

Org has the variable `org-agenda-repeating-timestamp-show-all' which  
allows
to modify this behavior for all repeating time stamps, not for  
individual ones, though.


- Carsten